Page 133 of Slay Ride

I wait for him to say something, but he just stares at me. The excitement dips, and I worry he’s upset with my plan or that he thinks I’m being a stupid, silly girl or that?—

“I am so fucking proud of you.” He pulls me into his arms and kisses me. “Whatever you want to do, I’ll support you. But what does this mean for the Confessor?”

“The Confessor?”

He pulls me closer, that devilish smirk playing on his face as he looks down at me. “Yeah. I mean, you found your tag line.Tell me what you’ve done. Tweak it a bit—tell me your sins—and bam, you’ve got your name. The Confessor.”

“Hot damn, you’re right!” If I smile much wider, my fucking cheeks will split. “Even if I become a nurse, I don’t plan to give up my new hobby. I enjoy helping people, but I also enjoy ending people who deserve it. Can’t I do both?”

“Kitten, with me by your side, you can do whatever you want.”

And as he kisses me again, I know it’s true.

Epilogue

Three Months Later

Bennett

Anewspaper looks up at me from the kitchen table in my New York apartment. Well, the apartment Cat and I share. We have a second apartment in Florida so that we can visit my mom and check on Jim’s newest business venture, and a third in Portland so we can visit her parents. Being under Jim’s employ has done wonders for my bank account.

So much so that I’ve already paid for Cat’s upcoming semester at a local community college.

Cat lies on the couch, stretched out with Shorty on her lap. She chews the tip of a pen as she studies a crossword puzzle. The cat jumps down and slinks under the couch as she sits up.

“What’s a six-letter word for a weapon of mass destruction?”

Sounds of mass destruction burble underneath the couch as the cat begins using his claws to remove the underpinning.

“Shorty,” I say.

“Ha. Ha.” Cat lies back again. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. That may not be a designer couch, but I worked hard to pay for it.”

Cat rolls her eyes. “You shoved a bottle rocket into a man’s ass and lit it on fire, then laughed as he bled out. I was there, remember? There wasn’t very much hard work going on.” Her eyes light up, and she presses the pen to the paper. “Rocket! That’s the word!”

“Have you seen the paper?” I lift it from the table and go to the couch. Cat raises her legs, and I scoot beneath them. “Look at the front page.”

She plucks the paper from my hand, reads the bold headline, and smiles. “The Confessor strikes again,” she says. “I’ll never get used to that.”

Doctor Whitlow was her most recent kill. We finally made that fucker pay for the little stunt he pulled, and we also discovered that Cat wasn’t so far off when she initially asked him what his sins were. As it turned out, he’d been abusing elderly men in his facility for years.

With him fully out of the picture, my mother’s safety is assured. Her health has steadily declined, and the time I have left with her is limited, but with Cat planning to become a hospice nurse, we’ll soon be able to bring her home.

My phone rings, and a woman’s name flashes on the screen. I hurry to push my phone into my pocket before Cat notices.

“Hey, I gotta take this call.”

She places the newspaper on the coffee table and resumes her crossword. “Who is it?”

I frown and shake my head. I hate lying to her, but she can’t know about this. “Just work.”

The phone stops ringing before I reach the bedroom, so I hurry and pull it from my pocket and return the call. The woman answers on the second ring.

“Hey, did you still want to meet today?” she asks.

I peer through the crack in the door to be sure Cat is still occupied. “Uh, yeah. Can we meet later tonight? I’m having friends over in a bit, and I didn’t want you and I to feel rushed.”

---